Generally, an aperture is formed in a trim that forms a vehicle interior side surface of a vehicle door. In the aperture of the trim, a support member is mounted from the vehicle interior to rotatably support an inside handle. When the inside handle mounted in the trim in this way is rotated with respect to the support member, a lock device incorporated in the vehicle door is turned into an unlatched state (a state in which the vehicle door is openable with respect to the vehicle body).
In addition, the support member may be configured by a base member which is a frame body rotatably supporting the inside handle and having an opened vehicle interior side end portion, and a bezel which is a frame detachably mounted to a peripheral edge of the interior side end portion of the base member.
When the support member is configured in this way, the design of the vehicle interior side surface of the vehicle door can be improved by devising the design of the bezel exposed on the vehicle interior side surface of the trim.
FIG. 11 illustrates an example in which the support member is constituted by a base member and a bezel.
In the trim of FIG. 11, a support member mounting portion is formed to protrude from an aperture toward the vehicle exterior side.
On the outer peripheral surface of the base member in FIG. 11, a plurality of engagement claws protrude (only one is illustrated in FIG. 11).
The bezel illustrated in FIG. 11 includes a main body which is an annular frame and a plurality of engagement portions (only one is illustrated in FIG. 11) protruding from the peripheral edge of the main body toward the vehicle exterior side. Further, in each of the engagement portions, an engagement hole that penetrates the engagement portion in the thickness direction (substantially in the vertical direction) thereof is formed. Further, the vehicle exterior side end portion of each engagement portion is configured by an engagement hole forming portion which defines the vehicle exterior side edge of the engagement hole.
In this example, when the vehicle interior side end portion (the peripheral edge of the aperture) of the base member is covered with the main body of the bezel in a state where the base member is separated from the trim, engagement claws of the base member are introduced into engagement holes of engagement portions of the bezel, respectively, and the respective engagement claws engage with the engagement hole forming portions from the vehicle interior side, respectively.
Therefore, as long as the engagement between the engagement claws and the engagement holes (the engagement hole forming portions) are not intentionally released, the integrated state of the base member and the bezel is maintained.
When the base member and the support member mounting portion are screwed to each other in the state where the base member and the bezel, which are integrated with each other, are inserted into the aperture of the trim from the vehicle interior side, the base member and the bezel are fixed to the trim as illustrated in FIG. 11. See, for example, JP 2012-087474A (Reference 1).
In the example illustrated in FIG. 11, the periphery of the aperture on the vehicle interior side surface of the trim and the vehicle interior side surface of the main part of the bezel are flush with each other. In this way, the design property around the inside handle on the vehicle interior side surface of the vehicle door is improved.
However, in this case, when the size of a (annular) gap formed between the inner peripheral surface of the aperture of the trim and the outer peripheral surface of the main body of the bezel becomes large, the design property around the inside handle on the vehicle interior side surface of the vehicle door is degraded.
Therefore, in this case, it is necessary to design the shape of the trim (aperture) and the bezel (main body) in such a manner that the size of the gap formed between the aperture of the trim and the main body of the bezel becomes small.
However, in this case, as illustrated in FIG. 12, when the base member and the bezel, which are integrated with each other, are inserted into the aperture of the trim from the vehicle interior side, the engagement hole forming portion of the engagement portion is likely to come in contact with the peripheral edge of the aperture of the trim from the vehicle interior side.
In this case, the engagement portion is likely to be elastically deformed so that the engagement hole forming portion may be released from the engagement with the engagement claw.
When the engagement is released, the bezel falls off from the base member when the base member and the bezel are mounted to the trim. That is, the base member and the bezel cannot be mounted to the trim while the integrated state of the base member and the bezel is being maintained.
Thus, a need exists for an inside handle support member for a vehicle door which is not susceptible to the drawback mentioned above.